August 21, 1961, Patsy Cline recorded ‘Crazy’ in the makeshift Nashville studio of Nashville music producer Owen Bradley and his brother, Harold.
Still on crutches after going through a car windshield in a head-on collision two months earlier, Cline recorded the classic Willie Nelson song ‘Crazy’. She had difficulty reaching the high notes of the song at first because of her broken ribs. ‘Crazy’ spent 21 weeks on the chart and eventually became one of her signature tunes.
Cline began recording in the mid-’50s, and although she recorded material between 1955 and 1960 (17 singles in all), only one of them was a hit. That song, “Walkin’ After Midnight”, was both a classic and a Top 20 pop smash. In the 50s Cline sang flat-out rockabilly; she also tried some churchy tear-weepers. She couldn’t follow up “Walkin’ After Midnight”, however, in part because of an exploitative deal that limited her to songs from one publishing company.
She remained popular through 1961 and 1962, with “Crazy” and “She’s Got You” both enormous country and pop hits. Fresh talent supplied much of her achingly romantic material like Hank Cochran, Harlan Howard, and Willie Nelson (who penned “Crazy”).
Although her commercial momentum had faded slightly, she was still at the top of her game when she died in a plane crash in March 1963, at 30.
Patsy Cline helped blaze a trail for female singers as an integral part of the Nashville-dominated country music industry and is one of the greatest country music singers.
